Gomocup 2005, the 6th tournament (April the 16th, 2005)

The sixth tournament had slightly modified rules. One author may not submit more than one brain. The brains were allowed to maintain some data on hdd between the matches, which they could use to learn something from their opponents. Because the number of competing brains has become very high – 18, we had to start using qualification groups. There were three groups, 6 players each. The three best programs would continue to the finals. Both the groups and the finals were played with system each-with-each for 10 matches in the Gomotur manager. Other conditions were same as before. You can dowload all the replays of the 6th tournament for Gomotur.

The programs were divided in the way that they were sorted according to the last tournament rank with the new ones placed at the bottom in alphabetical order. Then one member of each qualification group was chosen randomly from every trinity (groups marked by different colors):

The qualification was played on Tuesday the 12th April on three different computers at home by three different people – Jirka Fontan, Vojta Havranek and Martin Petricek. The groups were assigned in a way, that nobody played the group where his own program was. Thank to last feature of Gomotur, we could be automatically uploading the process of qualification at web by ftp where anyone could watch it. The ftp server had some problems with simultaneous upload from three sources. Fixing that caused us a delay.

First group – Jirka Fontan

PC configuration:
AMD XP 1600+, 750MB RAM, Windows 2000

AI1000:Brutefor 5:5
Five times the same boring matches. Both programs won their beginning. AI1000 was totally crushed in the other matches.

Brutefor: Noesis 3:7
Noesis lost some important points because of too daring opening in this match, which later show fatal for him in the qualification.

Brutefor lost all other matches 0:10. It took him very long time to think, even in clear situations. The last match of Brutefor with QMentat was interesting, because they occupied two separate parts of the board. This match ended by Brutefor’s timeout.

Noesis : Bestmove 1:9
Noesis managed to win only the first match because it forced Bestmove to timeout.

Noesis : HGarden 0:10
HGarden didn’t give Noesis a chance.

Noesis : QMentat 5:5
This was the most exciting match, because the chances were almost equal and it was to decide, who continues to the finals. QMentat needed at least a draw. Noesis won all his beginning with no problem. QMentat’s beginning turned into long matches all of which were finally won by QMentat, who placed 3rd in the group and made it to the finals.

In the match between HGarden and BestMove, both brains won easily their beginnings resulting in a 5:5 draw. None of them gave a chance to QMentat. HGarden was also the one to think the longest time, 7.23 in average.

Second group – Vojta Havranek

According to last tournament results, new Goro was estimated to be a champion of the second group. He really won the group using his typical offensive style where both brains seem to build their lines on separated parts of the board. There were two newbyes in the group also – pbrains G_Motor by Roman Vancura and Kanec by Jaroslav Babak. Even though the former had problems with match timeouts and the latter was corrected to be usable short time before the qualification, they were very ambitious. I was curious for the match Trunkat vs Kanec which was to decide, who gets to the finals. Kanec won this match with no problem. Trunkat, Pisq and Leonardo didn’t make it to the finals. Btw: Leonardo presented a funny error – whenever Goro started at 10, 9 Leonardo tried to play at the same square and lost.

Third group – Martin Petricek

After initial problems with beta (some missing libraries) third group started at 13:48
Quite interesting was beta and pela match … these two formed almost a circle at one moment :o)
Pela was thinking the longest time from all of the brains.
Puškvorec timeouted once (match timeout), the results were nicely separated – 15,12,9,6,3,0

Finals

The finals were open for public, in the PC lab of the Prague University. There was three of us, me – Vojta Havranek, Jirka Fontan and Tomas Kubes. We used 4 PCs with speed near to 2GHz for a distribued tournament. The process was being broadcast on the web, this time in two different ways. A HTML table with single match results was being automatically uploaded. Single replay files were being uploaded also, which should have allowed others to watch single matches with Gomotur. This feature unfortunately failed.

The mathches were quite equal this time, compared to those in qualification. QMentat, who had already problems with qualification, gained a draw with Kanec only and placed last. The only matches he won were those where he forced his opponnent to timeout. Kanec, who had problems with 30 seconds for one turn, suprisingly defeated Pela and placed 8th. HGarden, which seemed very dangerous, threw an exception a few times. T. Kubes’s new brain Beta, that he sent at last moment proved to be very good. The ultimate winner was noone but program Goro by Viktor Barykin, who defeated even the second Swine by Jirka Fontan and third Pela by Petr Lastovicka.

30 seconds tournament

Finally we set up an unofficial quick tournament with time limit 30 seconds for a whole match. Brains Bestmove, G_motor and HGarden, who had no chance of obeying the limit were removed. We added Krysa and Dolores instead. The winner was Pela before Goro and Beta. You may download the 30 seconds tournament replay here.